


Four Nights at Anthony's

by thestarsapart



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s02e22 Quo Vadimus, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 07:47:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18774346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsapart/pseuds/thestarsapart
Summary: As she disappeared into the crowd, precariously balancing the tray, Cal finally looked Jack dead in the eye and said, “I’m going to make that woman very happy.”Jack laughed. If he had a nickel… “Good luck, man, but Dana’s heart belongs to that guy.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, not towards the back table where the Sports Night cast and crew were huddled, but towards the TV, where Casey was giving the injury report.Cal just shook his head and sipped his drink. “Dana’s heart belongs to her show. Casey McCall is part of it, certainly, but not the whole part.”





	Four Nights at Anthony's

Jack first noticed the guy because he was drinking alone at 9pm on a Tuesday. That wasn’t too unusual, except that Jack was pretty sure the guy had been in the day before, too, also alone. If you know what you’re looking for, it’s easy to spot the difference between a guy drinking alone because he’s trying to escape the people in his life, and a guy drinking alone to escape his own loneliness. This guy seemed more like the latter, but not in a desperate way. Like the loneliness was a choice he had made, but one that he occasionally reconsidered when he found himself alone at a bar in the middle of a bustling city. He was definitely an out-of-towner, but not really a tourist. He didn’t have the hungry eyes of a salesman on a multi-city route. Maybe one of those rich guys who live in a different city every month, then. But understated, not arrogant, so not the asshole kind of rich.

“Jack, was it?” the guy said. He must have overhead one of the other patrons earlier. Most new customers just assumed his name was Anthony, after the name of the place.

Jack nodded, and the guy held out his hand. “I’m Cal,” he said. Firm handshake, but not aggressive. Brief eye contact, then a glance away at the always-on TV over Jack’s shoulder. So a little shy, but in a business where he’d learned to value the social niceties. Jack just appreciated being offered a handshake and an invitation instead of a shouted, anonymous drink order. It was a refreshing change, and tonight was a slow night, anyway. Plenty of time for the social niceties. Jack fixed Cal another gin martini and turned up the volume on the Mets game.

  


The next night, there he was again. Jack turned around and Cal had somehow found his way into the best seat at the bar, despite the after-dinner crowd. He had his eyes on the TV again, but gave a brief nod when Jack offered another martini. After he’d finished up a round of extremely pink cocktails for a group of tourists and noticed Cal’s empty glass, they finally graduated to the small talk stage of the bartender-drinker relationship. Cal made some bland comment about _Sports Nigh_ t, and Jack realized with delight that it must already be after 1am and he only had a couple of hours left on his shift. He let Cal know that the _Sports Night_ folks were kicking around the restaurant somewhere and paused for the usual starry-eyed tourist reaction, but instead Cal’s eyes just slid back towards the TV.

Even when Dana barreled towards them with her usual frantic bluster of energy, Cal maintained his calm but vaguely awkward tone as they discussed the show. Jack was out of coconut water again (Natalie had been steadily drinking her way through a month’s supply of the stuff in the last week), so he ducked into the back. When he came back, Dana was staring at the guy, dumbfounded, but she didn’t seem creeped out or pissed off, so Jack didn’t interfere, just handed her a tray with three beers and a coconut piña colada.

As she disappeared into the crowd, precariously balancing the tray, Cal finally looked Jack dead in the eye and said, “I’m going to make that woman very happy.”

Jack laughed. If he had a nickel… “Good luck, man, but Dana’s heart belongs to that guy.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, not towards the back table where the _Sports Night_ cast and crew were huddled, but towards the TV, where Casey was giving the injury report.

Cal just shook his head and sipped his drink. “Dana’s heart belongs to her show. Casey McCall is part of it, certainly, but not the whole part.”

  


Thursday night it was a scotch for Cal, and Natalie was a little slower on the piña coladas. But Alex was cleaning up a glass that Dan had dropped and the other server who usually ran drinks for Jack was busy with a bachelorette party by the door, so Jack didn’t get to stick around for the latest installment of the Cal and Dana show. But he did get a glimpse of Dana’s face as she headed back towards her friends, and it was even more shell-shocked than the night before. The whole _Sports Night_ gang was looking pretty shell-shocked these days, though, poor bastards. Well, bad job security for everyone else was good job security for bartenders, Jack liked to say. Not in front of the customers, though.

  


Jack pulled some overtime on Friday, 4pm-4am. That meant he started his day with business news and the suit-and-tie crowd instead of the dinner rush. They usually didn’t switch over to CSC until around 7, because the _Market Report_ crew sometimes stopped by for an early dinner after their 5pm show. Dana always said she was happy not to have the distraction of sports coverage when she came in for her lunch. “Sometimes I just need a glass of wine, an overpriced salad, and thirty minutes to read a book and not think about sports,” she told him once. Once in a while when she was in a chatty mood, she’d try to start a conversation with Jack about the topic of the day on _Market Report_ , but neither of them really knew what they were talking about and they both worried about embarrassing themselves if some of the Wall Street crowd came in for a drink, so they usually just treated the stock market news as soothing background white noise.

Today Dana was neither chatty nor actually reading the book she’d brought with her, but Jack’s bartender instincts told him this was not a customer who wanted comforting small talk with the wise neighborhood barkeep, so he left her alone with her wine. Cal clearly lacked the seventeen years of bar experience that Jack enjoyed, and struck up a conversation with her as soon as he’d ordered his lunch.

Dana was cashing out and packing up to leave by the time Jack got back with Cal’s steak, but he did catch enough of the end of their conversation to hear a bunch of impenetrable business jargon, and to see that Dana no longer looked startled, just tired. Jack shook his head at Cal as the door swung closed behind her.

“She’s having a rough week,” Jack said, not sure how much of the _Sports Night_ /CSC melodrama Cal was aware of, or what part he was playing in it.

Cal took another bite of his steak, staring up at the end of _Market Report_ , his eyes flicking back-and-forth slightly as he read the stock prices off the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

“She’ll be all right,” he said, with quiet but unwavering confidence. “That’s what I was in town to find out, but I’m sure now. They’ll all be all right.”

  


Four and a half hours later, Cal was back and nursing his gin martini as the Friday night crush built up behind him. Dana appeared at the door and Jack had to double-check his watch. Damn, only 11pm, not one. Why wasn’t she in the studio? She rushed over to the bar, out of breath, and Jack leaned in, reaching with one hand towards the phone under the bar. Was someone hurt outside? Were there bomb threats in the building across the street again? But Dana wasn’t heading towards him, she was making a beeline for Cal.

Cal didn’t seem to know what was going on any more than Jack did, but he stayed as cool and implacable as always except for the slightest strain in his voice as he tried to get Dana to calm down long enough to talk. She downed his drink in three gulps, which was sure to calm her down eventually, and caught her breath. She didn’t look like she was about to pass out or throw up, and Cal’s unruffled demeanor seemed to be rubbing off on her, so Jack moved on to other customers, keeping an ear out in case it turned out something was on fire. All he heard from their end of the bar before he had to run to the kitchen were a couple of corporation names and a mention of stocks. Dana must have been picking up a few things from the _Market Report_ guys.

Jack got back just in time to hear Dana realize that her show was on and rush out the door, but she sounded happy for the first time in weeks. Deliriously happy, actually. And Cal had a broad, genuine smile on his face for the first time since Jack had met him. Cal pointed towards the TV.

“Watch this,” he said, and Jack glanced up as Dan and Casey read off the headlines, but he didn’t notice anything particularly exciting. The guys were looking pretty sad and tired these days, too.

“What am I looking for?” he asked after a minute, as the show cut to commercial.

“Those people think they’re about to lose their jobs,” Cal said, gesturing towards the screen. Jack reached for the gin; Cal was going to need another martini since Dana had finished his last one. “They think all of their friends are about to lose their jobs.”

“Yeah, that’s why they’ve been walking around here like it’s a funeral for the last week,” Jack said, scooping ice into the shaker.

“See if you can spot the moment when Dana tells them they all get to stay,” Cal said, and Jack looked up at the screen. For a moment he stood there, condensation from the metal shaker dampening his palms, and watched the list of potential side effects scroll by on a commercial for blood pressure medication. Then Dan was back on the screen, looking five years younger.

“Well, it looks like we’re stuck with each other for a while,” he said.

Jack gave Cal his gin martini on the house.

  
  
  



End file.
